Will Miss #511 - mottainai (regarding food)

Image from the mottainai info site. 

One of my students told me that she went to a curry restaurant and was served an enormous portion. She told me that she tried very hard to eat it all, but eventually, she had to "give up". This type of story, including the conclusion that one should try to eat everything one is served, was very common among my acquaintances and friends in Japan. Some would eat until they were very uncomfortable and successfully clean their plates, and others would do the same without such a triumph.

I asked each time why these folks would stuff themselves and the answer was always "mottainai", which means they didn't want to waste anything. The memories of famine during and after World War II have created a mentality in Japan of not wasting things, especially food. Those who suffered during the war grew up not allowing one grain of rice to be wasted. Even now, you'll find people in Japan overeating so as not to waste food.

Despite the fact that there are different types of waste in Japan (especially in the service of building new buildings every 15 minutes), there is a mentality that food should not be wasted. In the U.S., I've found that people waste food with abandon. Since returning, I've thought that I could comfortably, perhaps lavishly, subsist on the food people bought and never ate or did not finish. I miss the attitude that food is too important to waste.

Won't Miss #495 - "worn" = "dirty"

Yes, this is a real place in Tokyo (in Hamadayama). I don't know what it was all about, but the elaborate garbage placement nearly made it a work of art. 

I have a real ambivalence about the way things worked in Tokyo in terms of the constant renewal and the waste associated with it versus the pristine sense of things being clean and new. Since coming back to America, I have been struck by how profoundly grubby things seem at times, even when they are actually technically "clean". Stores, even large, modern ones, in particular can sometimes shock me with the wear and tear on their structures which make them appear rundown. In Tokyo, customers generally felt uncomfortable with any sort of visible wear such as cracks, chips in paint, age-based yellowing. Anything that resembled age-related loss of quality was generally kept to a bare minimum. Most things felt pretty fresh and relatively new, if not actually "new". It didn't hurt that cleaning was done thoroughly, not simply "regularly".

All of that being said, I couldn't help but believe that it was immensely wasteful to refurbish or replace things simply because they were worn in appearance yet did not have diminished utility. In this day and age of concern about resources and the environment, it felt like an immense indulgence to a particular aesthetic to be replacing things that were perfectly functional, but superficially somewhat unpleasant.

My students used to tell me that they didn't like certain things like their old clothes, bags, or apartments because they were "dirty", but what they almost always meant was that they looked worn or used. I won't miss the waste associated with this mentality.

Won't Miss #105 - overpackaging

Despite my appreciation (in the previous post) of the convenient packaging in Japan, I feel very guilty about buying things which are individually wrapped. This is often especially true for things for which it appears unnecessary. For instance, do some types of sembei really need to be individually wrapped? It feels a lot like putting 5 Pringles chips in stacks and wrapping them in plastic. Mainly, the wrapping keeps the chips looking nicer and doesn't really do much for portion control or freshness as people are unlikely to gobble down a ton of large-sized sembei in one sitting.

I won't miss the large piles of plastic being created by overpackaging and how bad it makes me feel to be contributing to environmental degradation.

Will Miss #104 - convenient packaging

Rice being sold in a 200 gram (7 oz.) package that can be snapped in half for 100 gram (3.5 oz.) servings.

Most things in Japan are packaged with the customers' convenience and lifestyle preferences in mind rather than efficiency. This is handy if you're the type of person who prefers to eat things in small portions or takes a long time to use something up. Often cookies come individually wrapped so that you don't have to worry about air getting into the bag or repeatedly exposing the contents to germs each time you dip into it. Such convenient packaging isn't perfect (air does slowly get into the sealed individual packages, too), but it does discourage over-eating and keeps things cleaner.

I'll miss this convenient packaging and the (good) effect it has on my eating habits.